The importance of Content and Language Integrated Learning
There are a number of reasons why the development of CLIL is important in language education:
- Enriching the content of language learning and teaching makes it more interesting and more challenging. Language teaching which concentrates only on linguistic development does not provide the same opportunities for developing pragmatic and sociolinguistic competences; the intellectual challenges offered by good CLIL teaching have the potential to enhance cognitive growth.
- School timetables are crowded, so combining language classes with subject learning is a way of using time more efficiently. In many countries, learners can choose to present subject areas in one of the foreign or second languages they study in school. A bi- or pluri-lingual school-leaving diploma is an advantage both in terms of employment opportunities and for university entrance in many countries.
- All subjects have their own kind of literacy; the “languages” of mathematics and history, for example, have specific linguistic and discourse features. Language teaching in schools and universities needs to help learners to acquire these subject literacies, and the development of study skills is an important part of making progress in language competences, especially at levels B1 and above of the CEFR.
Challenges in CLIL and related research
One of the key challenges in CLIL is how to optimise both language and subject teaching. In other words, if history or maths or a science is taught in a foreign language, how can we ensure that the learning is as deep as it would be if the subject were delivered in the learners’ first language? And equally, how can language progress be maximised when the main emphasis is on the content of lessons? Both of these have an impact on the selection and training of teachers for CLIL.
A further challenge is the development of CLIL teaching methodologies; these include the development of questioning and elicitation techniques, the uses of paraphrase and redundancy to make it easier for learners to assimilate information in a language in which they are not fully fluent. More developed didactic approaches are concerned with the way in which tasks can be scaffolded and information and concepts structured in ways which generate optimal learning.
It is also important for stakeholders – schoolchildren and their parents as well as administrators and education authorities – to be informed about what can and cannot be achieved by CLIL approaches.
There is a considerable body of research on these and other challenges – in the International CLIL Research Journal or the International Journal of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education, for example. There is also a considerable body of applied research into CLIL and practical development of CLIL methodology, much of it resulting from ECML projects. This includes frameworks and matrices for implementing skills, descriptors of the competences used in subject learning as well as resources for plurilingual activities in primary and secondary learning. Further details can be found in the resources section below.
CLIL and bi- and plurilingual education
Although many of the approaches developed in CLIL are also relevant for bilingual education, the two domains are not identical. CLIL is referred to mainly in circumstances where the content of language learning is enriched by additional emphasis on providing stimulating content, whereas in bi- and plurilingual education the whole programme is designed to take place in two or more languages.